


Future

by deathwailart



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Control Ending, F/F, Paragon Commander Shepard, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-28
Updated: 2012-07-28
Packaged: 2017-11-10 22:01:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/471166
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathwailart/pseuds/deathwailart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>30 days of writing challenge: future</p>
            </blockquote>





	Future

Being a soldier means sacrifice. Being her means sacrifice. She lost her parents, just normal farmers who tried to raise her right, to look at what an opportunity it was to be out in space, to experience a different life. They didn't deserve their fate, didn't deserve batarians appearing from nowhere to burn their home to the ground, everything they had worked for, for their last moments together to be fraught with fear and horror. She doesn't know how she managed to keep going when people would have understood giving in, giving up. She wasn't a soldier then. Something kept her going, a survival instinct that followed her to Akuze. Maybe it was the gratitude when the Alliance showed up, when an officer took her hand (shaking, covered in blood and dirt, fingers and knuckles red raw) and hauled her onto a shuttle, putting his jacket around her. She didn't cry. It was too soon and the shock took a long time to overcome because no one was really prepared the first time they saw incendiary ammo, certainly not against unarmed, unarmoured civilians.  
  
(How easy would it have been for her to end up like Talitha? To end up that _broken_ that pretending it happened to another person, another distant forgotten girl made 'living' possible. She never forgot the fear in her heart because if she hadn't managed to talk that girl down then she would never have forgotten it and she would always have felt guilty and ashamed for failing.)  
  
Sometimes she still felt guilty for surviving. Because that was the sum of her life was surviving, something letting her make it through what others didn't. Akuze, the damn thresher maws that took her crew one by one, the people she played Skyllian Five poker with, laughed with. She made a point to get to know her people because she learned too damn early how quickly they could be snatched from her. That was a long haul, one by one wondering why them and not her, why did she get to survive in the face of others.  
  
(Ash angry at why her and not Kaidan on Virmire and was that how it looked to others if Shepard had ever let them see? That need to lash out because there was always someone better and more worthy in your own eyes.)  
  
Why bring her back from the dead? Why make her a symbol, a beacon, the best of humanity when she still navigated ghosts, jealous when people talked about their parents or got messages from home, when sometimes she expected to see Kaidan waiting with a smile, that whisky rough voice telling her about his life and helping her assess missions. When someone joined her crew she didn't want to ever let them go. She helped them. Wrex's armour, Dr. Saleon, Tali's pilgrimage. Helping resolve old grudges, recover things lost, reconcile their ghosts because she couldn't when it was her, couldn't put all the pieces of her old life back together; her life was the future. Her life _is_ the future. Even after she died she didn't complain, she jumped back in alongside enemies to try to accomplish something so no one would have to know the same fears and horrors that she did, not if she could help it.  
  
They rebuilt Mindoir but it wasn't the same, it wasn't her home. They rebuilt her too but she wasn't always so sure if she was the same or not; Miranda's logs had claimed that she would have failed if she hadn't brought Shepard back exactly as she was and even if she hated Cerberus, hated their tactics, their rhetoric and their methods, she hadn't had the heart to say anything. No one else had ever had a second chance like Shepard and she was sure her parents would have told her to be grateful, to make it count. Dad was never military but he liked to talk about making things count, that they all had a responsibility to be the very best that they could be and that as long as she tried her best then he would always be proud of her.  
  
Maybe that was why she chose this path she has now. If she could hurt, she would and she wishes she could say sorry to Liara who was always there for her, the one who helped her see that there was some wonder in the galaxy when all the universe felt dark and desolate around her (that was why she tried so hard for Liara because Liara was Shepard's light and she couldn't stand to see her so lost, so lacking in direction or purpose after Thessia because Shepard knew what it was like to lose your home, to lose everything dear to you.) She wishes she could have had those little blue babies. Her hands ended up shaped by weapons and armour but once she knew how to tend crops and animals. She built an old-fashioned barn with her parents and neighbours, painted fences, pulled weeds until her hands blistered beneath her gloves, her back throbbing and a sunburn decorating the back of her neck. She could have taught her little girls that, how to love the world around them, the living things.  
  
Now her body is gone but she is giving them something. If she is truly the best of humanity, the only one who could accomplish all that she has accomplished then she can watch over them all, rebuild not in the way she wants to but the way she has to. She can watch over all those who will follow, all those she has helped. Wrex will make her name synonymous with hero and she knows Grunt will too in his own way, talking of his battlemaster. Liara will have her little blue babies with someone because it's Liara and Liara can do anything and somehow even if she is only her memories, her experiences, all the things that make a person that aren't physical then she will be so damn proud.  
  
She fought for the lost once. Now she guards the future. She will brook no threat to all those she has fought for and those who will follow from anyone or anything. She is too a nation.


End file.
